OF COURSE, DEMOCRATS WILL OPPOSE THESE TOO:

Mr. President, Let's Share the Wealth (DAVID BROOKS, 2/08/05, NY Times)

If the president's current version of personal accounts stalls, he should consider another version - one that is more likely to win broad support, and that achieves all the goals of an "ownership society."

The personal accounts I'm thinking of would be inspired by a proposal called KidSave, which was floating around in the late 1990's. KidSave was championed by Bob Kerrey when he was a Democratic senator from Nebraska, but in its different iterations it attracted support from a range of Democrats (Lieberman, Moynihan and Breaux) and Republicans (Gregg, Grassley and Santorum).

Under one version of KidSave, the government would open tax-deferred savings accounts for each American child, making a $1,000 deposit at birth, and $500 deposits in each of the next five years. That money could be invested in a limited number of mutual funds, but it couldn't be withdrawn until retirement.

Over decades, it would grow and grow, thanks to the wonders of compound interest, so that by the time workers retired, they would each have a substantial nest egg, over $100,000, waiting for them.

The KidSave idea was an early venture in what has become a broad intellectual movement that goes by an infelicitous name: asset-based welfare.

Make the initial contribution from the Feds far larger and fund them annually for kids growing up in poverty. Combine that with means-testing of Social Security and you gut the program through the backdoor.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 8, 2005 10:37 AM